CFH and Macular Degeneration
This web page was produced as an assignment for Gen677 at UW-Madison Spring 2010.
Microarray Analysis of CFH
The following is a gene profile from an experiment found by searching for CFH on GEO (Gene Expression Omnibus)
Experiment
In this experiment on Homo sapiens, expression levels in dermal fibroblasts from patients with macular degeneration and those without macular degeneration were measured via microarray anylysis. The condition tested in the fibroblasts was sublethal oxidative stress. This study tests the hypothesis that patients with macular degeneration have an abnormal response to cellular injury in sites other than the eye. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that CFH is a complement system protein and would therefore be part of the response to cellular injury. As can be seen, there isn't much of a difference of expression when normal and macular degeneration patients are compared. They appear to have the same amount of variance. This suggests that one of the causes of AMD is not the lack of expression or over-expression of CFH.
Experiment
In this experiment on Homo sapiens, expression levels in dermal fibroblasts from patients with macular degeneration and those without macular degeneration were measured via microarray anylysis. The condition tested in the fibroblasts was sublethal oxidative stress. This study tests the hypothesis that patients with macular degeneration have an abnormal response to cellular injury in sites other than the eye. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that CFH is a complement system protein and would therefore be part of the response to cellular injury. As can be seen, there isn't much of a difference of expression when normal and macular degeneration patients are compared. They appear to have the same amount of variance. This suggests that one of the causes of AMD is not the lack of expression or over-expression of CFH.
CFH Expression
CFH has been shown to be expressed in tissues all over the body. The highest levels are present in liver tissue. The eyes also have very high levels of CFH expression. One study has shown that the complement system becomes more active in later stages of life in mice (1). I have been unable to to find a study concerning this in humans, but it would be a very interesting thing to explore.
References:
1. Skerka, C., N. Lauer, A. A. W. A. Weinberger, C. N. Keilhauer, J. Suhnel, R. Smith, U. Schlotzer-Schrehardt, L. Fritsche, S. Heinen, A. Hartmann, B. H. F. Weber, and P. F. Zipfel. 2007. Defective complement control of Factor H (Y402H) and
FHL-1 in age-related macular degeneration. Molecular Immunology. 44:3398-3406.
Microarray data is from searching CFH on the Gene Expression Omnibus: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/
References:
1. Skerka, C., N. Lauer, A. A. W. A. Weinberger, C. N. Keilhauer, J. Suhnel, R. Smith, U. Schlotzer-Schrehardt, L. Fritsche, S. Heinen, A. Hartmann, B. H. F. Weber, and P. F. Zipfel. 2007. Defective complement control of Factor H (Y402H) and
FHL-1 in age-related macular degeneration. Molecular Immunology. 44:3398-3406.
Microarray data is from searching CFH on the Gene Expression Omnibus: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/
Microarray data is from searching CFH on the Gene Expression Omnibus: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/
Rebecca Bauer
[email protected]
last updated 5/17/2010
www.gen677.weebly.com
[email protected]
last updated 5/17/2010
www.gen677.weebly.com
